


there’s a hole in my pocket (where my dreams fell through)

by Lightning of Farosh (orphan_account)



Series: Golden, Hollow Myths [1]
Category: Linked Universe - Fandom, The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds
Genre: Gen, Linked Universe (Legend of Zelda), Post-Adventure Depression, Reference to Link's Awakening, There's no cussing which is a surprise
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-02
Updated: 2020-01-02
Packaged: 2021-02-27 05:55:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,606
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22082194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Lightning%20of%20Farosh
Summary: He had always left after. This time was no different.
Relationships: Link & Zelda (Legend of Zelda)
Series: Golden, Hollow Myths [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1601809
Comments: 15
Kudos: 91





	there’s a hole in my pocket (where my dreams fell through)

Gold, summer warmth swirled up Link’s arm. It sung with the rumble of thunder, the crackle of a forest fire, and the howling of a winter wind. He shivered in its embrace unable to decide whether he should lean into the touch or pull away so he stayed where he was instead and breathed.

The aches, the burns, and the splinters of bones left from the fight with Ganon faded away. Arteries and veins reformed beneath dark, heavy bruises and the sour, rotten sting of dark magic was replaced the back of his tongue by sweet, honey tea.

All that was left was the bright, warm light of the Triforce.

(It was like eating a bowl of hot stew when the world was cold, like being hugged by someone he hadn’t seen in a while, like dreamless sleep after a day of hard work.)

Zelda sighed beside him—a small, content sound—and Link bit his tongue before the warning could escape his lips.

(Only half gods were worshipped with wine and flowers, after all; the real ones demanded blood.)

 _Oh,_ the Triforce said as if amused, _it’s you._ It had a voice made of three that echoed but managed to never sound the same twice.

Link grinned, though it was pained and weary and felt more like an ache in his stomach than joy in his heart. _It’s me,_ he said. There was a pause as the heat expanded beneath his palm. It sunk into each bone in his fingers until they each buzzed with the vibration of working bees. The Master Sword grew heavy on his back; full of the past and future and all the lives in-between. _Again_.

In the ringing of divinity, he could almost hear the laughter of the goddesses. Power burned through his skin and settled in his ribcage, crackling along bone and sinew with the trembling urgency of a wild beast about to be set free.

Link breathed in and tilted his face up to the eternal sunlight of the sacred realm. Birds sung behind him, above him, around him. He could almost feel the flutter of their wings against his cheeks and smell the faint dust in their down.

_I wish…_

_I wish…_

_I wish…_

* * *

Deep in the darkness of Lorule, divinity long destroyed came to light once more.

* * *

“Thank you, Link,” Zelda said.

He could feel her gaze on him, cataloguing the bruises and gashes and scrapes that seemed embedded in his spirit even though the Triforce had healed his body. They had landed in the castle not long after making their wishes and he had immediately sat on the scorched and cracked floor of the throne room. Stone bit into soreness that existed beneath his muscles and in the depths of his marrow but he was loathe to move until—at the very least—his knees stopped shaking.

Beside him, the sheathed Master Sword thrummed. Link didn’t want to touch it.

“For what?” He said instead, tilting his head back to avoid meeting her eyes. The bones in his neck cracked in a domino effect from the back of his skull to between his shoulder blades. Link winced at the sound.

Outside the castle, thunder rumbled. A promise of a storm, of a change. He rubbed at the place on his wrist Ravio’s bracelet had once bit into his skin with old leather and magic.

Zelda sighed. “ _Link,_ ” she said, voice quiet. It managed to reach him regardless and there was a power to it that burned his lungs and the back of his throat. He felt like a star—too big, too bright, and willing to choose its own destruction instead of continuing to burn.

Link swallowed it down like he swallowed down Koholint and Holodrum and the night he had first heard a princess’ voice in his dreams. If he closed his eyes, he knew he’d be able to see the bright shine of the Triforce.

So he didn’t close them and chose to stare up at the ceiling instead.

_How many was this now?_

“I’ve been thinking about becoming an apple farmer,” Link told Zelda. “Buying up acres and acres of farm land to plant apple trees.”

Her skirts shifted and rustled, heels clacking on stone. “Have you?” Zelda settled beside him with slow, ginger movements until her shoulder brushed against his. The warmth of her skin made the chill the Triforce left behind flee to the darker parts of his soul. “You do fit the requirements I suppose: tall. Strong. Able to climb trees.”

Link looked at her. There was a sly, unmarred and very un-princess like grin on her face. “How _dare_ you,” he sniffed imperiously. “Do you mock all your subjects' dreams, princess?”

“Oh, _absolutely_ ,” Zelda said, leaning further into him until she could rest her cheek on his shoulder.

Rain hit against the windows in slow patters before speeding up. Light flashed through the glass, illuminating the scars left on the final battlefield. They sat there together, the cold ground biting into their legs and only warded off by the warmth they offered each other.

His nose brushed against her hair as the weeks caught up, dragging him further and further into the dreams that awaited him.

There was a murmur beneath him, more vibrations against his throat than actual words.

Link hummed and opened one eye. “What was that?”

“Where will you really go?” Zelda repeated, breath hot against his collar. Some of her fingers grabbed onto the red of his tunic while the others latched around his wrist as if he would vanish right then. “And don’t tell me ‘back home’,” she continued before he could say anything. “I know you too well for that.”

Her grip tightened, almost as if she was afraid he’d turn into smoke in her hold.

“You left the first time.”

He did.

“Why?”

Link breathed in and it felt like his body was full of places unseen, of memories, and of things to come. How could he explain to her the ache in his soles and the ache in his soul? How could he describe the unspooled yarn of thread that made up his being and how he wanted to find all the places it had gotten tangled in? He had hands for holding reigns and swords and sail boat ropes.

Being a blacksmith had been a nice dream, but running away was a powerful instinct etched into his bones.

“I like the sea,” he told Zelda.

(He could have said that he loved the peace the ocean brought him; as if he, too, was made of only salt and water.

The ocean, after all, had always been more honest with those that were willing to drown.)

* * *

Ravio had left a bag on his table and a note beneath one of the plates. Everything had (mostly) been put back into place, but the bed was still shoved far into the corner and there was a sense of _wrong_ about the layout.

Link ignored it all and face planted into his pillow, curled beneath freshly washed sheets, and slept.

A hand knocking on his door jolted him awake. He thought about throwing something to ward off whoever had decided to bother him but after five minutes of searching for something that would be dramatic enough to get the effect he was going for, they went away.

Curling beneath his blankets, he closed his eyes and tried to will sleep to return.

It didn’t.

So Link lay there, looking over his small home with half lidded eyes. The sun snuck through the curtains covering the far window and he watched small particles swirl in invisible drafts of air until they disappeared into shadows and new ones were born out of everything and nothing. A distant thought snuck up in the back of his mind and he wondered if that was what divinity truly looked like: simple things, easy things. Maybe it was clothes on a line billowing in the breeze. Maybe it was a boy-made-soldier wandering through grass that reached up to his thighs with the birds overhead and the wind at his back.

The clock ticked with no alarm set, but Link didn’t need to know what time it was.

He was late for work.

Again.

A small part of him wanted to laugh. Another part wanted to take a sword to Ganon’s face all over again. He missed the feeling of his skin turning to paint. He didn’t want to miss it at all.

(In the far, far reaches of his mind, there was a voice that sang three, gentle chords that reminded him to awaken.)

The Triforce of courage no longer burned on the back of his hand, but he felt the weight of it in his chest anyways.

 _You whimp,_ Link thought, and pushed the covers down to his feet. The Master Sword sat by the door, propped up against the wall. He stood in the clothes he’d worn the day before (and the day before and the day before). They were wrinkled and crusted from blood so he shrugged off the tunic and kicked off the trousers before fishing through a chest for something softer.

At the bottom was his uncle’s tunic. Link pulled it on and ignored the way it easily reached past his thighs.

Ravio’s things sat, untouched, while he made breakfast and a list of stuff that needed to be done.

* * *

_Dear Link,_

_Thank you. For letting me use your house, for being willing to save Lorule, for everything. It’s not a very good business plan, but I left some things behind for you._

_Hopefully you’ll find a use for them whatever you plan on doing next._

_I suppose this is the last you’ll see of me, though I do hope we meet again._

_Sincerely,_

_Ravio_

* * *

Link washed his tunic in water he’d pulled from the well and heated on the stove. It pruned his fingers and bit under his nails, transitioning from clear to a deep, rust-like brown that glimmered darkly as the sun went down. Lanterns hung on the walls, their flames flickering and sending odd shaped shadows across the floor.

None of them dared to approach the Master Sword.

* * *

People who don’t know what adventures felt like would tell you that it’s like knuckles to teeth, like being dragged over rocks and plants with fishhook thorns, like seeing the same thing over and over again but not knowing which left was right and which right was left.

Here is how it really feels: like warm blankets and a hot mug of tea after running home through the rain, like seeing something new for the first time and going ‘ _ah. I know this place’_ , like the moonlight and stars whispering stories of things that might have happened but you both know that their truth is a fleeting promise on the edge of legends.

Adventures change a person in ways home never could.

Link finished sewing the holes in his tunic, looked around at his plates and his chairs and his bed and knew it was time to move on.

He left when the moon was fat and full, while windows were still lit from the inside by fires that wouldn’t fade for hours. A bag hung over his shoulder with the ability to hold more things than it should and the Master Sword was strapped to his back, thrumming with acceptance of where his feet headed.

On and on he walked. Past the castle, past villages, past streams and lakes and roads leaning off into the wilds until he reached the edge of the Forgotten Woods.

When he went in, the sword on his back caught the moonlight and shone with ancient divinity.

When he came out, the sword was gone.

* * *

“Where you going, lad?”

“South.”

“South? Not much south, I’m afraid. Just some monsters that decided to lurk around.”

“They lurk everywhere; not sure how the south is all that different.”

“Well, sure, but—just be careful, kid. It’s dangerous to go alone.”

“Isn’t it always?”

* * *

A wind swept through Link’s sweat slick hair, tugging on the hat that seemed too long and too short at the same time. He watched the sun crest over the edges of trees that looked as though they were made of tears and tore his Pegasus boots through mud that tried to drag him down into murky depths. Insects buzzed around his face and wrists, curious about an interloper who muttered curses at his own feet and waved them away from his eyes.

Humidity stuck his tunic to his skin and clung beneath his knees. The Noble Sword hung at his belt, sturdy and balanced despite being hidden away for some time.

(If it had rusted in his absence, Link probably would have climbed that stupid wall all over again just to beat the old man with the pommel.)

A tree seemed to reach for his bag and Link ducked beneath it, wiping sweat from his brow.

The birds had gone quiet. The insects had fled.

Link tilted his head to the side, rested his hand on the hilt of his sword, and _listened_.

There was a crackle of something drifting on the wind. Something different and new and old all at once.

He stepped onto the roots of a tree and tightrope walked his way from trunk to trunk, head ducked low and eyes scouring the swaying leaves and slowly sifting mud. Branches caught on his sleeves and tugged at his tunic, as the rotten, deep smell of old earth and new decay reached his nose.

 _Go back,_ whispered the creak of leaning wood.

 _There is danger,_ water gurgled.

Link drew his sword an inch from its sheath and pushed a veil of branches out of his way.

Butchered animals lay, half swallowed by mud, in the middle of an egg shaped clearing. Their mouths were open, their sightless eyes staring at the sky. Meat had been ripped from their bodies by massive mouths and clawed hands before leaving the rest here, to rot.

 _What a waste,_ Link thought, lip turned up in a disgusted grimace. He pushed the leaves aside even further and saw something big and purple and triangular in the center of the massacre.

It crackled with magic and burned with chili fire in his sinuses.

“Well,” he said. “ _Well_.”

Something in him bubbled. It started deep in his stomach and worked its way up to the top of his sternum. For a moment, he thought it was nervousness. More danger to fight, more beasts to slay.

But it wasn’t.

It was something entirely different. A feeling that only came when he wandered into places he was never supposed to be.

 _Excitement_.

Pushing aside the branches, Link stepped away from saftey and into the open.

No beasts jumped out of shadows. No snarl greeted his approach.

There was only the _slurmp, slurmp, slurmp_ of his boots in the mud as he approached the yawning, hungry doorway.

Link picked up a branch and threw it in only to watch it get swallowed into the standing abyss. He drew his sword and pushed the tip through until only his hand and the pommel was outside before drawing it back out.

Nothing.

“That’s new,” he said and took one last look back towards Hyrule, the castle, and where Princess Zelda waited.

Sword held out before him, Link stepped forward, through the portal, and into someplace he’d never been before.

(And because he was unusual and tragic and so very much alive, it was that newness that made a wide crocodile grin spread across his face.)

**Author's Note:**

> The fact that the Hero of Legend just gets up and leaves after every game is exactly how I live my life. Good for him.


End file.
